Two teenage girls, Sharon and Susan (both played by Hayley Mills), who look exactly alike, meet at a summer camp. Sharon is a bit snobby and Susan a bit of a tomboy. Their clashes lead them to be punished by eating and rooming together, and as they break the ice, they discover that they are twins separated by divorce. Sharon lives with her mother (Maureen O'Hara) in Boston and Susan with her father (Brian Keith) in California, Once they figure out their relationship (their parents never told them about each other), they decide to switch places to get a taste of how they each live, and to get their parents back together. It's fun and games for a while until Sharon discovers that Brian Keith is in a serious relationship with gold digger Joanna Barnes that may lead to marriage and they have to kick their plan into high gear. When I think of classic-era live-action Walt Disney movies, MARY POPPINS is always the first that comes to mind. But POPPINS is something of an outlier. It’s a fantasy/musical with a good-sized budget, a great score, a couple of wonderful production numbers, and a newly-minted star in Julie Andrews. When you compare it to other Disney films of its time, it barely feels like a Disney movie. This film from three years before is more typical of the live-action (non-musical) template that ruled for the next several years: brightly lit stagy-looking sets, lots of TV actors, OK special effects, and a major bog-down in the middle which makes it feel about 15 minutes too long. At two hours, this is definitely too long, but not in that deadly way that today's superhero movies and streaming TV shows are. The story is cute, and the adult actors are all fine, including Una Mekel, Charlie Ruggles, Leo G. Carroll and Nancy Kulp, and I always love seeing Joanna Barnes of Auntie Mame fame who could play mean like nobody's business, but let's face it, it all rests on Mills' shoulders and she carries the film quite nicely (helped by the occasional split-screen effect). Directed in a fairly pedestrian manner by David Swift (How to Succeed in Business). There have been sequels but I don't know that I need to see them. (The accompanying picture, with the girls being punished at camp, has a Covid lockdown feel to it.) [Disney+]
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